Retro Television Review: Baywatch 1.13 “Home Cort”

Posted on February 14, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001. The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.

This week, we meet John D. Cort.

Episode 1.13 “Home Cort”

(Dir by Paul Schneider, originally aired on January 12th, 1990)

There’s a new lifeguard on the beach!

His name is John D. Cort (John Allen Nelson) and he’s a former Navy SEAL with a dark and mysterious past. He drives a motorcycle. He wears a cowboy hat. He has a quick smile. He’s dangerous and he’s now a member of the cast. I’m going to guess that he was added to bring some mystery to the show. Originally, Eddie Kramer was supposed to be the dangerous lifeguard with the mysterious past but Billy Warlock was just too earnest and young to really pull that off. John D. Cort, on the other hand, is at least 40.

Now, I said that Cort was the “new lifeguard on the beach.” That’s not quite true. It turns out that he’s actually an old lifeguard who was a friend of Mitch’s and Craig’s. In fact, it’s insinuated that their friendship is legendary amongst the lifeguards. Of course, no one’s ever mentioned Cort before but whatever. Baywatch was never exactly known for its continuity.

Cort says that he’s returned to the beach so that he can work as a lifeguard for ten days and keep his eligibility. Actually, he’s been hired to retrieve a mysterious package that’s at the bottom of the ocean. He recruits his old friend, Sam (Bruce Fairbairn), to take him out into the ocean so that he can retrieve the package. However, an explosion costs Sam his life and forces Cort to deal with the fact that someone wants him dead. Who wants Cort dead? Some guy named Jack Burton (Drew Snyder). Why does he want Cort dead? Who cares? I got bored with the whole thing so I missed his motive. I could go back and find out but, as far as I’m concerned, if the answer was worth knowing, I wouldn’t have gotten bored the first time around. The story is really just an excuse to introduce Cort. At the end of the episode, he inherits Sam’s surf shop and makes peace with being a regular member of the cast for at least the rest of the season.

As for the B-plot, Shauni and and Jill go into business selling sandwiches on the beach! They take a lot of business away from crooked sandwich hustler Buddy Semple (played by George Clooney’s future production partner, Grant Heslov). Buddy reacts by hiring two women in bikinis to hand out his sandwiches. That’s the entire plot.

Oh, this episode. I’ll be so happy when the first season of Baywatch is over with and the show fully and cheerfully embraces the stupidity of its concept. Until then …. welcome to the beach, John Cort!

So, I Watched Perry Mason: The Case of the Lethal Lesson (1989, Dir. by Christian I. Nyby II)

Posted on January 10, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) has spent a semester teaching moot court at a law school. When one of his students, Frank Wellman Jr. (John Allen Nelson), is murdered, the accused is another student named Ken Malansky (William R. Moses). Despite being a close friend of the victim’s father (Brian Keith), Perry thinks that Ken is innocent and agrees to defend him. Ken’s ex-girlfriend, Amy Hastings (Alexandra Paul), pays Ken’s bail and helps him and Perry investigate the crime, even though Ken spends the whole movie talking about how “crazy” she is.

No William Katt. No David Ogden Stiers. Barbara Hale’s barely in it. The Case of the Lethal Lesson was the start of a new era in the Mason movies and I didn’t like it. Ken and Amy are Perry’s new assistants but I didn’t like either one of them. Amy was stalkerish but Ken still cried too much about her being the one who paid his bail. Did Ken just want to stay in jail? Ken just wasn’t very likable and it bothered me that the movie never explained why Paul wasn’t available to help. Both Paul and William Katt deserved better. Meanwhile, the new prosecutor (Marlene Warfield) didn’t have the same friendly rivalry that her predecessor did. The mystery element was okay until some cartoonish gangsters showed up. I didn’t buy any of it.

Give it up for my sister, though. A few minutes into the movie, Lisa said, “I bet that’s the murderer,” and she was right! If Perry Mason had her helping him instead of Ken and Amy, he could have solved this case a lot quicker.

Spring Breakdown: Hunk (dir by Lawrence Bassoff)

Posted on March 22, 2021 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Released in 1987, Hunk tells the story of Hunk Golden (John Allen Nelson).

At first glance, Hunk seems to have everything. He lives in a huge house on the beach and he’s good-looking and muscular enough that he can actually pull off the rainbow speedo look. Women want to be with Hunk and men want to be Hunk. He’s rich. He can eat all the food in the world without putting on a single pound. He’s got a great smile and wonderful tan and he even knows karate! Hunk drives a red convertible that has a personalized license plate, one that reads: HUNK. If anyone else did it, it would seem narcissistic but Hunk can pull it off.

However, Hunk is deeply dissatisfied with his life. As he explains to his psychiatrist, Dr. Sunny Graves (Rebecca Bush), he wasn’t always Hunk Golden. He used to be a nerdy writer named Brady Brinkman (played by Steve Levitt). After Brady’s girlfriend left him for an aerobics instructor, he somehow managed to write a guide to how to become rich. Brady’s wasn’t sure where his inspiration came from but he was still able to make a fortune off of it. After Brady moved to the beach to work on his next project, he discovered that being wealthy didn’t mean anything unless he also had the right look.

That’s when he was approached by O’Brien (Deborah Shelton), an emissary of the devil (James Coco). O’Brien turned Brady Brinkman into Hunk Golden and taught him how to be …. well, how to be a hunk. The only condition was that, after a number of months, Hunk would have to give up his soul to the devil. Hunk agreed but now, with the deadline approaching, Hunk isn’t so sure that he wants to condemn his soul to eternal damnation. Is being the hottest guy on the beach really worth an eternity of burning in fire and being poked with those little pitchfork things?

Now, it probably won’t come as a surprise to our regular readers to discover that this film was produced and distributed by Crown International Pictures. From the 70s through the 80s, Crown International specialized in low-budget exploitation films, with a surprisingly large number of them taking place on the beach. Nowadays, of course, the Crown International filmography can be found in countless Mill Creek boxsets. Hunk can be found in several. I own enough Mill Creek boxsets that I’ve probably got a dozen copies of Hunk in my DVD and Blu-ray collections.

That said, while the film’s low budget is obvious in every frame, Hunk is actually slightly better than the typical Crown International beach film. While it seems to take forever for Brady to become Hunk, the film has got a likable cast and it actually delivers its message about self-acceptance with a surprising amount of sincerity. This is the rare Crown International Film with a heart and, for every joke that falls flat (and there’s several), there’s at least a few unexpectedly clever moments. The film takes an especially strange turn once Hunk becomes a celebrity and starts to wonder if he should accept the devil’s invitation to become a demon and help start a world war. Steve Levitt and John Allen Nelson both do a good job playing Brady and his alter ego, though all of Nelson’s dialogue appears to have been dubbed. James Coco delivers his evil lines with a properly devilish glee. Incidently, this was also Brad Pitt’s first movie. While he had no dialogue and went uncredited, he can be easily spotted as an extra in one of the beach scenes.